EMS Management Training

Add a Comment

Comment by Dana Love on September 9, 2009 at 8:55am

Back from summer vacation soon, so I put together an update of the segments we're working on for the fall/winter EMS Leadership Topics.

The video podcast takes the approach that leadership education can be found across different industries, and we cherry-pick great information from the broad business market. Many of our topics come from some of the world's best business schools, and we try to make that information applicable to the EMS community.

For this fall and winter, we're researching stories on bias in evidence based medicine, the progress of education of our personnel, the death of the public utility model of EMS delivery, and a variety of tactical leadership tips.

You can find the FREE video podcast on iTunes or at the website, as well as clips on YouTube.

Of course, if you've got ideas about a topic, want to contribute or have something helpful you want to tell the more than 1,400 subscribers, let me know!

Comment by Scott C. Holliday on August 5, 2009 at 11:17am

Greetings. I am just retired Deputy Chief of FDNY EMS Training. I had major responsibility for training many of the current FDNY EMS officers. I hope to share many ideas with this forum.

Comment by Bruce Evans on March 28, 2009 at 11:22pm

There are other documents at the NIMS integration center on EMS resource typing. Services need to organize like this I believe the Feds may look at more contracts than just to AMR for ambulance strike teams and AMR has outsources for striketeam components to meet their federal contracts for disasters. You know I looked on the Ross system for wildland for ambulances and there is none listed. Great business opportunity for someone to put EMS resources into the ROSS system

Comment by Skip Kirkwood on February 22, 2009 at 10:48am

Bruce - nice document. Recommended reading for the rest of you.

Skip

Comment by Bruce Evans on February 22, 2009 at 3:58am

A-019 Alarms Fire Final Draft.doc

Comment by Michael Touchstone on February 17, 2009 at 11:48am

Good morning folks,

Skip, I would say the first issue is the concept of the “EMS community”. There really is no single unified EMS community. There is an EMS community of sorts, but it is very diverse, fragmented, and ill defined, with many conflicting populations and interests. Truthfully there is no well delimited definition of EMS, in that many entities call themselves EMS yet they have nothing to do with emergency medical response.

Second, I wonder how much influence the history of volunteer EMS service has on the labor side of this equation. In the greater Philadelphia area the majority of the paid EMS services developed out of volunteer services and many if not most still have a volunteer component. There are also many hospital based services, and the hospital realm is mixed…some are union some not. Most of the private services are not primarily emergency response providers, so there is a question as to whether or not they should even be considered under the EMS umbrella. Then you have the fire based EMS services. I don’t know what the national percentages are, but the IAFF would have us believe that they represent a huge portion of the EMS workforce. I suppose it depends on how you define “members of the EMS workforce”. Should the firefighter/EMTs that only do first response be considered EMS providers? Should or could they be represented by an EMS union?

My personal experience encompasses a third service combination volunteer/paid service, a hospital based service, and a fire based EMS service. I am currently represented by Local 22 of the IAFF. On the one hand the union has negotiated very good benefits packages within our interest arbitration awards. However, I feel they fall short when it comes to EMS specific issues. It’s understandable when you look at the numbers; 230 paramedics and EMS officers in a local made up of 2200+ active members (that figure does not include retirees, who still have input). And as members of the fire department, we are limited; all members of the department must be represented by a single bargaining entity. Oddly, that means officers up to the level of deputy chief, the management side, are represented by the local.

So, we are set up for another standard EMS “wicked problem”. When we have no single representative voice in any aspect of our discipline, when different stakeholders define EMS differently, and define the “labor/management” problem differently, when we still have a strong volunteer component, when our workgroups are small and incorporated into larger workforces, solving the “EMS labor/management” issue becomes nigh on to impossible.

We are also faced with the growing divide that I see coming between technically trained EMS providers and educated professional EMS providers. The EMS community is so diverse that it makes it difficult to represent them all. Are we looking for a paramedic union? An EMT union? Both? Are their interests the same?

Like many of the issues in EMS, this one is another “wicked problem”

"Wicked problem" is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem)

Comment by Jeff on February 17, 2009 at 10:00am

I have been chewing on this issue since you brought it up. I think the lack of organized labor in EMS comes from many different factors. First, there are a number of us that don't like unions. The local fire departments that I am familiar with are all union and they have a very contentious work place because every issue is viewed through a labor vs. management lens. There are other issues that make me cautious about union but I don't want to go on an anti-union rant.
Second, a larger number of use are firefighters and already have a union. Even the private ambulance services are staffed partly by off duty firefighters. Another large number of us want to be firefighters, so we plan on being part of the IAFF as soon as we get our firefighter job. Why invest in a transient workplace?
Third, we don't play well together.
Fourth, most EMS in my area is provided by small services that would probably just close instead of spending their time fighting with their workers. If you know your employer is skirting bankruptcy several times a year and you need your job, the idea of enacting a bunch of work rules or suing them isn't as appealing. People tend to very loyal to these small services.
There are probably other reasons as well. I have been watching how things work in the fire service in my area and I am not sold on the idea that the IAFF is the moving force behind everything good that happens to the firefighters. I would say that civil service protections and property insurance ratings are also a factor. I would definitely be interested in hearing what the rest of ya'll think about this.

Comment by Duncan Hitchcock on February 17, 2009 at 6:37am

I hate it when no one responds.

Comment by Skip Kirkwood on February 17, 2009 at 6:34am

OK, I got no response on the blog, or the link, so I'll try posting here. Please give this some thought and let me know what you think.

Many of the posts on this network site, and others, bemoan the plight of poor, overworked, underpaid, and under-respected EMS providers.

Yet, the EMS community does not seem to have an active labor movement working to improve this environment.

I must confess that I'm not a union guy - I'm a chief in a right-to-work, no collective bargaining for public employees state. So the situation probably works to my advantage - maybe. But I am curious.

It seems that much of the economic and political success in the fire service comes as a result of the efforts of the IAFF, which claims 292,000 members. The EMS workforce study places the EMS workforce at between 200,000 and 700,000 members, which ought to be a formidable force. Yet I couldn't name a single large, EMS-only labor organization that might represent more than 2% of the EMS workforce. I see EMS folks represented by the SEIU (service workers), AFSCME (general public employees, heavy on the clerical), the Teamsters (truck drivers), police locals, fire locals, and a variety of others.

Is there an explanation for this phenomenon, or for the lack of a single focus EMS labor organization? Or is it just another example of that saying (cleaned up for publication) that "EMS folk can't organize a sandwich in a kitchen"?

Standing by for enlightenment.......

Skip

Comment by Skip Kirkwood on February 14, 2009 at 3:37pm

Check out the question I've posted on the blog, at http://connect.jems.com/profiles/blogs/the-ems-labor-movement-or

I'd like to know what you think.

Skip

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last